


Values

by lizzledpink



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzledpink/pseuds/lizzledpink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To first feel truly alive, to understand and reach for what they desired most, they all had to die. And did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Values

**I. Control**

The first breath felt wrong, and that was when she remembered she was dead.

"Rise," said he, and she obeyed, lifting herself from the cold slab.

Sensation was dark, and powerful, she noticed. She curled her fingers, and felt hunger beneath, fierce and writhing - but around it, calmness.

She inhaled, and exhaled, and found no need to repeat the process. She pressed a finger to her wrist, to feel the beat of life pulsing within her, and found nothing. Wretched, blissful nothing.

She was still.

"You are quite wonderful," said he. 

"Oh, but I _am_ ," replied she, curling her lips around the words. "Aren't all things, once set free?"

And she was, she realized. Free. Free of that life behind her. The only men who would have her now would be the ones she chose. Her death had come, and brought with it something she hadn't known she'd been looking for.

She could choose the path ahead.

"Well said, my dear, well said," praised he. "Name thyself."

"Pardon?"

"You are mine now, dear one," he explained delicately. "And you are hungry. So feed - but first, you will require a name. You are not the being you once were."

She gazed at him then, recognizing truth in his words. Her name passed through her mind, but she swore then it would never again pass her lips. It was tainted with the plague of mortality. She could choose, she reminded herself. But she didn't need to.

"No. I'm yours. You name me," she demanded.

His smile was sin. He beckoned her close and bared his neck to her. As her fangs sank in, he spoke.

In death, he gave her life.

  
  
**II. Power**   


Waking was slow to build, but when it came, it struck him mercilessly. There was the briefest of moments where the intensity of it made him want to scream, and then, it snapped together.

He knew she was waiting.

Up, screamed his instincts, primal, sharp. He punched the lid, and broke through the wood on his second attempt. He dug his nails into cold, wet dirt, and realized that this, here, was his fight. The one fight that truly mattered, the first of many to come.

The mud posed little challenge to the beast rising within.

His hand struck air, a cool night's breeze, and he rose, crawling, proud, into the darkness.

She was there. Panting needlessly, he stood before her slowly. His joints were at once on fire and at peace, graceful and limber, strong and firm. Agony. Strength.

"Welcome to my world," she said, her smile enticing. She pressed her hands to his chest, and at once awoke with in him desires buried, lost, surfacing. "It hurts, I know," she cooed, "but not for long. Birth is _always_ painful."

Birth? Was that this pain he felt? "I could feel them, above me," he heard himself say, "as I slept in the earth. Heartbeats, their blood, coursing through their veins... Was it a dream?"

"A dream for you," said she. "Soon, their nightmare." She gave a little giggle, and he felt himself smiling back, starting to steady, starting to understand.

A man interrupted. "You there!" 

He turned to face the man. The man held a lantern. "What have you done? Graverobbers!" the man shouted.

It wasn't pity he felt. He started towards the man, but then looked back at her.

"You know what to do," she said. His guiding light, he thought, and he nodded and turned back to the man.

The beast within him rose to the surface, and he marvelled at the fear it invoked.

"O Lord in Heaven, hallowed be thy name," babbled the man, "Thy kingdom come thy will be done, give us this day..."

He bit down, and sucked the sweet life into his cold body, drank of the nectar that sung to him even in his rest. He was arrived.

As he finished, she asked if it made sense, and it did. Told him he could do anything, have anybody in the village.

Strength coursed through him, and he knew his response.

"Anyone?" He paused, remembering - malice, anger. Family. Disgusting humanity, frivolity. Remembering being weak and worthless, things he was no more, now that he had been born. He knew his response.

"I thought I'd take the village."

And his beast within howled with the pleasure.

  
  
**III. Beauty**   


The world was not prettier when she opened her eyes. The light was cold and she was enclosed in a place not meant for things that could move and speak. The death of trees surrounded her.

She would have whispered apologies to them, but she was dead as well, and thought they would forgive her. The first kick did the trick, and the earth fell on her. Well, she would just have to fall upwards against the earth then, wouldn't she? 

Not even gravity could hold a thing as impure as she. The thought made her giggle as she began to dance with her cage, poking it and prodding it until it collapse on her breast. With another laugh, she shoved it aside. She felt so light! Like a faerie, or a pixie, thought she, still giggling. A wicked thing, a wicked wicked witch with wicked ways! Oh, she was still naughty, and she still saw the stars even beneath her six, but it no longer hurt to be full of sin. She wasn't tied to the world anymore!

Daddy was going to be so pleased.

It stung and was not nice to climb the six of earth, but she managed it, and gave the ground a little pat when it was beneath her little boots. 

"Oh, your dress got all rumpled under the ground, sweet," said Mummy. She made a clucking noise with her tongue and reached a hand down to help her up. "Come on, up with you."

Mummy looked brighter now, she realized, and the thought made her smile. "Grandmummy, you're all glowing," said she, and she pressed a soft kiss to Grandmummy's lips. "Like candles in your eyes."

"You say the loveliest things," said Mummy. "But don't bother being chaste, darling. You're like us now. It's okay." Grandmummy put her lips to hers, and she squeaked before realizing it felt nice. It seemed to make Grandmummy happy, at least, so it was good.

But Daddy still pulled her away, after a moment. "Now girls, have your fun another time. Hello," he said to her, kindly.

"Daddy," she said, "I've been awfully, awfully bad. And I'm awfully hungry. I'm grounded. Won't you find me a pretty treat?" she pouted slightly.

Daddy chuckled, fond, and kissed her roughly, and slipped a hand beneath her blouse to cup her chest. She should have felt like she was horrible, because it was such a very bad thing of him to do, but Daddy said God had left her long ago, and Daddy was always right. "You're beautiful," he said. "The most beautiful thing I've ever made."

"I like being called beautiful," she told him. Daddy was beautiful tonight, and Grandmummy was beautiful. She herself wasn't as beautiful as they thought. The tricksy thoughts still kept her in her dreams, and she could tell the blood was just around the corner. But it didn't scare her any longer.

Nothing as pretty as the rubies-red of blood could scare her anymore.

  
  
**IV. Respect**   


He wanted to kill.

That was his first instinct when he came around. His second was to growl, and his third was to _shove_. The lid gave way, flying towards the other side of the room and hitting the wall with a satisfying crash. 

"Wakey-wakey," cooed she.

With a scowl, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of a coffin. There were other coffins in the room, but they didn't hold his concern, not like she did.

"Is my brave knight still asleep?" she asked. "Bother. I was so hoping he'd be willing to play."

"I don't want games. I want to kill," he snarled. "I want to kill everything."

Humming a little tune, she skipped forward, letting her dress move with the sway of her indeterminable beat. Her eyes caught his, and he got lost for a moment. "There'll be plenty of killing later. Killing, and blood, and all those other things. But first, I want my knight. Won't you be my knight? I chose you so well."

Under her gaze, he felt himself relaxing. The fire still burned in him, still demanded violence, but he could wait. For this creature, this vision, this beauty, he could wait. He felt the demon retreat, lying in wait.

With a short hop, he was off the edge of the coffin, and wrapping an arm around her waist, pressing a hard kiss to her temple.

"I'll be your anything, love," he said. 

"And why's that?"

"You're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I pay my debts."

"An honourable knight indeed," she mused. "Daddy and Mummy are going to like you."

"Daddy? Mummy?"

She giggled sweetly and whispered in his ear. "We're going to be family. We're going to be  _everything_. The stars promised it. It's going to be like a party. Mummy, Daddy, me, and my beautiful black knight."

He knew she was mad, completely off her rocker, but it didn't matter. Just because she was insane didn't mean she couldn't be right, too. And she'd given him this. No more poetry, no more moping, no more whining like a bloody ninny. A second chance. A chance to be exactly what he wanted to be. 

Death.

And he loved her for it.

"As my lady commands," he said.

She put a hand to his skull and nestled his head against her neck. "Drink," she commanded.

He bit and tasted her, sweeter than everything, feeding the fire that now burned in him, giving life to the demon, to the man he was going to be.

Finally, he was something _more_.


End file.
